The Syrian situation has been a complete failure for French diplomacy, unlike Operation Serval in Mali this January, which was judged a military success and politically satisfactory. France, dropped by its allies for its hardline posturing, has been profoundly humiliated and that will leave scars. It claimed it had “made Moscow bend” and “dragged” Washington along with it, but that clumsy attempt at saving face will not bear scrutiny, despite comment in some parts of the French press. The international verdict is straightforward: in foreign ministries and media, there has been commiseration and Schadenfreude over French self-satisfaction.

The plan put forward by Russia’s President Putin on 9 September, proposing that Syria’s thousand or more tonnes of chemical weapons should be “secured” under UN supervision, now has unanimous international support. It was probably first mooted in bilateral meetings with the US at the G20 summit in St Petersburg on 5 September. This informal agreement between the big players — “big” here is more a marker of diplomatic maturity than size — was achieved without France even being consulted, dashing any hopes France had of being first lieutenant after the UK’s withdrawal.

The Russian plan provided Barack Obama, who is fundamentally reluctant to become involved in any kind of intervention, with a way to avoid the trap he set for himself in 2012 when he spoke of the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war as a “red line”. John Kerry’s tough talk then provided the basis for trying to preserve as much coherence as possible in the US position, until the anticipated convergence of opinion with Putin was achieved, to the mutual satisfaction of the US and Russia: in late September, Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov met in Geneva for bilateral talks to establish the conditions for an international conference on Syria — Geneva 2 — scheduled for July 2014.

Putin the arch-manipulator has retained his freedom of movement and (...)

(2) On 29 August 2013, the UK House of Commons rejected authorising the use of military force in Syria by 285 votes to 272.

(3) Bernard-Henri Lévy, “Contre la diplomatie d’opinion” (Against diplomacy through public opinion), Le Point, 12 September 2013. Lévy compares the “punishment” France promised Assad with de Gaulle’s decision to leave NATO in 1966. His article is available in English.

(4) Michel Aflaq, a Syrian Christian born in Damascus in 1910, was one of the founders of the Ba’ath Party, a blend of pan-Arab nationalism and socialism, along with the Sunni Salah al-Din al-Bitar and the Alawite Zaki al-Arzouki. An advocate of a secular brand of Arab nationalism founded on Islamic values, Aflaq was sidelined by the military and forced into exile. He died in Paris in 1989.